Our Dream

“When I play soccer, I feel joy inside.” Those words from Lebogang, a matric student in Tshisahulu village in Venda, sum up what the Dreamfields Project is all about. Since our launch in October 2007, we have been working flat out to spread that joy — and many people, ranging from corporations to small companies to kids with huge hearts, are helping us to do that.

How You Can Help

Thanks to the vision and generosity of our founding partner, BHP Billiton, every Rand you contribute to Dreamfields goes a long way. No contribution is too small and our DreamGrowers range from giant corporations to eight-year-old children, from 60-year-olds celebrating their birthdays to small companies and government departments looking for an opportunity to put back.

Featured Dreams:

Dreamfields is working together with the Philipp Lahm Foundation in the football project “Shongi Soccer”, a daily football training programme on their sports ground built in 2007 between two townships near Johannesburg. The programme aims to give the young people of the area the chances that sport and life skills can bring.

The settlement with its poverty and misery offers few prospects for those who grow up there; families are destroyed by destitution and disease, children are often left to fend for themselves, and young people have nowhere to go. The sports ground gives them new opportunities, and we are getting through to them via their shared enthusiasm for football. By training coaches and furthering children’s football skills we are promoting sporting values such as team spirit, fair play, and respect for rules – and helping to open doors to new chances in life.

News

For Jan Prinsloo, principal at AJC Jooste Combined in the little Free State town of Petrusburg, the problem was simple. And maddening. "We keep on buying soccer balls, one after another, and they are destroyed within a few days," he said. "The reason the balls don't last is because the children play soccer every day, all day."

It all began with a bedtime conversation in the upstate New York town of Millbrook, a mother and her young children sharing thoughts about the world and its ways. “The initial idea for Soccer Unites sprouted from a conversation that I had with my two oldest children, Jude and Kaden, who are eight and six,” says Kinue the founder of Dreamfields newest partner Soccer Unites.

“They were complaining about not having a Playstation and a Wii and we discussed the problems many children around the world face like poverty, lack of clean drinking water and disease,” she recalls.

“For one week, Kaden consistently asked me what we were going to do to help these kids and we decided to start an organization. We chose soccer,” Kinue says, “because it is the most popular sport in the world and it would provide us with a good tool to reach as many children as possible.”